How much is your time worth?

You know what?  I love getting paychecks: regular paychecks, bonuses, overtime, side gig paychecks, checks in the mail, direct deposits...  I love them all.  It's easy to take for granted that another one will be coming...  We keep working; checks keep coming. Every time I get one I have this burning realization of how long it took me to get that paycheck.  How much of my life I sold in order to receive it...  Don't get me wrong, I like what I do for a living.  I don't make a practice of doing things that I don't like for money; that seems like a terrible way to live your life, and I choose not to live that way.

Regardless, I feel hyper-aware of the amount of time each dollar takes me to earn.  I earn about $0.75 per minute.  If I go somewhere to sit down for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine with my friends, I know that a $9 glass of wine costs me 12 minutes of my time to earn; a $5 glass costs me about 7 minutes..

My point is not that you need to sit around and figure out how many cents per minute you earn and compare it to the things you pay for, but it is an eye-opening experience.  While I don't typically spend my time calculating how many minutes it takes me to earn each of the things I pay for, I do know how much money I earn per minute (roughly...I am a salaried employee, not hourly).  It's a bit of a strange thing when you really think about it, trading my time for money.  While I can always get more money, time is a commodity I will inevitably run out of, and I can't really earn more of it.

This is why I am so meticulous about my money moves.  I traded something I can never get back in exchange fore each dollar I earn.  I have no plans on squandering any of my dollars because it seems like wasting time, literally.  All of my dollars have a job because eventually, I will have used my money so wisely that I can stop trading in my time...